Tag: Parish

CCCXI – Scoot and Hambone Talk About Stuff (Ep. 3)

Regarding Obedience and Authority:
(Ep 1 | Ep 2)

Hambone: There’s a video [a blogger] posts every Palm Sunday – I think we’ve talked about it before. It’s the French traditionalist congregation literally using a battering ram to remove the cinder-block wall blocking the front door of “their” church. Hundreds are singing “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat” in the background the entire time. It’s hard not to get emotional.

Scoot: Oh Yeah! That video left a profound impression on me.

H: It touches on a vein we struggle with. Where is the line? When is it OK to disobey? (It’s my understanding the bishop had it bricked up)

S: Yeah. It’s a tough question.

H: There was a Papal Bull in the 1500s that essentially says they can’t abrogate or change the Latin Mass. That’s why they just made a new Mass and pretended the old one wasn’t allowed.

S: If I’m a peasant, the local church is my only access to the sacraments, so to be cut off from that is to be cut off from life, right?

H: I imagine there were “Novus Ordo” Churches nearby.

S: The video looked old.

H: 1987

S: Wow. So, I don’t know man, bricking up a church seems like an OK thing to undo, right? Like, if it wasn’t a bishop who ordered it, it’s a no-brainer. Can a bishop lawfully order a parish to close like that? Well–we’re getting away from peasantly considerations.

H: So my understanding is he is a prince of his diocese. They close churches all the time, you know? And the parishioners are devastated.

S: It’s very weird. What happened in the aftermath of the battering ram incident?

H: To be honest, I don’t know. I can’t imagine they were allowed access from then on. The Church probably got sold and turned into condos.

S: What were the priests telling people?

H: The priest was set up to say Mass outside the Church. I think it was grassroots indignation.

S: Because the priests are the immediate Shepherd. If they said “Tear down that wall” then it’s ok for the laity to tear it down–it becomes a conflict between Shepherds (Priest vs. Bishop). But if the Priest said “Listen to the Bishop even though it sucks” then the Laity was wrong.

H: It’s tough–like, was the American revolution “wrong”? Can a person lawfully disobey God given authority? And under what circumstances?

S: I think the American revolution was wrong, to be honest. But since it happened, we are not bound by the sins of our fathers, you know? I think we should take great pains to NOT disobey lawful authority. It’s a kind of martyrdom to obey an unjust edict from a lawful authority. Not immoral, but unjust. Saying “This Church is closed” is a valid act, exercised poorly.

H: So how do I develop my standard? “Hey, cheat on your wife” is an easy order to disobey. But am I supposed to parse hundreds (thousands) of years of Church documents to figure out what is right? How deep into shades of grey do I go, you know?

S: No–you’re supposed to trust in the apostolic succession. Bishop is the representative of the Chair of Peter, not an elected official. The Holy Spirit works in them, through good or ill. You and I are powerless. The things we must disobey will be as obvious as “hey, cheat on your wife”. The things we ought to obey might be hard and might suck but out of obedience to the Church God gave us, I think we have to bow to an unjust prince no matter what we think.

H: So disobeying an order to pinch incense to the point of death is bravery. But so much nowadays it seems like they try to empty the divine of its meaning, rather than trying to get you to abandon it. And allowing the former doesn’t feel brave.

H: It’s a unique sort of punishment.

S: That’s why home worship is equally important to public worship (Mass).

S: Yeah, it’s a poetic kind of justice. We try to empty the divine of meaning and God says “Alright, disobey me? Have fun guys.” And we have to suffer under our own ideas, until we realign with God the way He intends. All of these problems are because we took on the weight of the world. And we are finding it heavy. Give it back to God–we need to do that as a Church. But until then we can only do that as individuals. Home worship, home sacramentals, are sufficient to keep the fire alive, in conjunction with any valid Mass. It might not be bright, but it will be alive.

H: You’re right, there’s just such a predisposition to “be right” or have an image of yourself standing up for the little man or thumbing your nose at “tyrants”.

S: Modernity makes us think the Church is a democracy. But we don’t get a say. And that’s hard, in a democratic world: to be actually powerless. It’s important to get to the point of understanding that.

H: We never did, but coming to terms with it fully is demoralizing–and freeing too.

S: Yes. It’s the true meaning, in my opinion, of “I am dust and to dust I shall return.” Dust can’t vote, or form itself into pottery. Dust settles where it is and it’s on the ones with the power to clean to move the dust where it needs to be. It’s demoralizing insofar as I thought I was capable of more; freeing in that I don’t need to be capable of more.

H: And in most peoples cases, it’s truly just their ego, not their reality. The battering ram is an interesting case because the people involved actually had the power to do something.

S: Yeah. And again–it’s the priests who were responsible for managing the flock. If the shepherd closes the gates to let a field lay fallow, and the sheep ram their way in, it’s the shepherds fault for not controlling the sheep. People are allowed to feel sentimental and affectionate to their parish. The priests are in the awkward position of explaining bad news in a way that calms the parishioners and obeys the bishop. These priests seem to have not done one of those two things to avoid awkwardness.

H: No, you’re right. The only excuse I’ll give was France was and is like, peak awful. But it’s important to realize that for everyone except Joan of Arc they were just sort of expected to live up to their station in life. And those called will be given the tools to “prove” it to those of good faith.

S: Well said. God gives graces to those called to a higher purpose. He gives graces to the rest of us too, but those of us not called to be Joan of Arc just need to worry about being good sheep.

AMDG

CCLXXXII – Any Enemy of Our Lady Is My Enemy

I just received an email from my parish that a grotto dedicated to Our Lady, with a statue of her and three smaller statues representing the children of Fatima, was vandalized beyond repair last night. I am deeply saddened by this–and surprisingly find myself angry. That isn’t just OUR Blessed Mother, that is MY Blessed Mother. And yours too.

This particular grotto is of profound personal importance to me as well. My fiance and I met on our first date and prayed at this very grotto. I proposed to her there. Just last night I attended a meeting of the Legion of Mary, and after the meeting went to offer flowers to Our Lady at this grotto. I might have been the last person to see the statue fully intact, excluding the perpetrators.

I am angry at this news–angry as if my own mother had been assaulted in the street. I don’t care so much about the personal loss of a place of fond memory–I know the grotto will be replaced and I have already emailed my parish Priest to offer my time, treasure, and talent, such as it is, to any efforts to replace the grotto. I don’t care so much either about the physical loss–though it is great. I am upset that a sacred place has been desecrated, that Our Lady has been treated with disrespect, that some soul in a place of torment and trial felt that this was a good idea.

To the perpetrator or perpetrators, I have only pity. Mary is literally Christ’s mother, so I can only pray that God have mercy on their souls. May their guardian angels bring them to repentance and convert them. May this loss–which, after all, is a merely physical loss–be turned to good for the conversion of souls with and through the intercession of Mary.

But know also this: Any enemy of Our Lady of Peace is my enemy. God’s justice and retribution is greater than anything I could offer, my revenge will be in helping to restore the grotto to a place of greater glory and to direct more souls to the care and intercession of Our Blessed Mother. I will wage war through prayer.

Please join me in battle, and pray the Litany of Loreto (Link Here) for the souls of the perpetrators, and for my Parish to consecrate itself more fully to Our Lady.

To Jesus, Through Mary

AMDG

CLXXIV – The Parish

I am actively involved in my parish Young Adult Ministry. My parish has a huge population associated with it so it can afford a paid staff member to coordinate this ministry, and I and others help that person in planning and organizing events, offering ideas and suggestions, and occasionally receiving mentorship pertaining to leadership and spiritual growth. During this time of dispensation, and because I have had to dial back my involvement due to my educational pursuits, I have tried to remain engaged in Ministry affairs because it helps me to have something to keep my mind engaged outside of work, and (more importantly) it presents an opportunity for me to give back to the Holy Mother Church in some limited capacity. The great, terrible challenge with this ministry is that gathering millennials is like herding cats.

It makes me think about what our relationship as individuals is to our Parish.

The Parish is like a franchise in that you probably have one that’s convenient to you but you probably also have one that you prefer because of some-or-other amenity. We seek it out when we need it and then leave when we are done.

The Parish is like a community center in that it provides a space for people to gather and often doesn’t require much if anything from people to gather there. Proximity to the Parish can make people feel good about engagement in their parish life but that engagement may or may not be aligned with the goals of the Church.

The Parish is like a school in that people go there to learn and even agree it is important to attend to the Parish but will not linger long after the closing bell rings.

The Parish should be like a towering, beautiful cathedral which one can tell is a place where God lives and which we are permitted to visit.

The Parish should be like a training grounds where people go to learn and enhance their craft and then take that craft with them into the world.

The Parish should be like a home where one feels a sense of pride in taking care of it, supporting it, and inviting people into it; where one loves the other people one finds there as family.

The reality of Parish life is far from what I am suggesting it should be, and my thoughts of what it should be are probably far removed from the original conception of a church back in the earliest days of Christendom.

The Young Adult Ministry of which I am part has this challenge of a tremendous host of people interested in consuming what it offers, and not especially interested in assisting to offer it. Much like that mother-hen in the childrens story about making bread. I can sense two very distinct pulls working on this ministry. In one direction, the pull to seek out these individuals and meet them where they are, and to be greeted as one of them. In another direction, to raise the bar and call individuals to a higher standard to try and grow them. In the first, we will have a great many people attending to our events who will have very little idea what it means to be Catholic; in the second, we will have very few people but they will be very well formed. Is it better to have quantity or quality?

This is an interesting problem to have, because probably never before in history has this particular ministry been considered an essential function of a Parish or a significant arm of Holy Mother Church. There are plenty of Parishes who do not have such a function and get along just fine, and it is hard for me to say if those Parishes are better or worse for it. They are certainly simpler for it. Given that my Parish does have it, and I happen to be involved, I am actively contemplating what is the best utilization of our time and effort.

The number one concern should be connecting individuals to the Sacraments, I think. Anything else is aimed at community building or evangelization or catechesis. All important things in their own right, but very difficult to achieve given the nature of our target audience and the current inhibiting factors imposed on us.

AMDG